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Saturday, 18 February 2017

£5m Ponzi Investment: London Police to Investigate Kingsway Church

London metropolitan police has opened a
criminal investigation into the disastrous Ponzi investment made by Matthew
Ashimolowo’s Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC) with Richard Rufus,
a member of the church, which led to the loss of £3.9 million by KICC.

This, according to The Guardian
newspaper of London, said police team of
investigators are to commence criminal investigation into KICC’s Ponzi
investment following a Charity Commission report into “mismanagement” at KICC,
which invested £5 million with Rufus, a former Charlton Athletic player.

Guardian newspaper also reported that
the church’s Chief Operating Officer, James McGlashan alleged that the founder
and senior pastor of the church, Ashimolowo knew about the disastrous
investment.

McGlashan made the allegation in an
interview with the Guardian.

“Detectives from City of London
police’s fraud teams are investigating. There have been no arrests,” a London
police spokesman confirmed to The Guardian.

Rufus was found by a civil court
judge in 2015 to have operated a Ponzi-style scheme between 2007 and 2011,
losing or spending £8 million from several investors.

The former professional footballer
was a leading member of the KICC whose founder, Ashimolowo, preaches a “health
and wealth” gospel to a congregation of thousands at his “Prayer Palace” in
Kent.

The largely African and Caribbean
churchgoers are urged to give regular tithes and the church collected £5.8
million from them in 2015, according to the latest accounts.

In 2009 and 2010, the trustees
agreed to give Rufus £5 million to invest after he promised them returns of 55
per cent a year at a time when interest rates were less than 1 per cent; as
well as millions in donations from churchgoers – which were boosted by gift aid
tax relief.

It had recently received £10
million from the London Development Agency, a public body that needed to
demolish the church’s then home in east London to build the Olympic Park.

The regulator said they failed to
check if Rufus had any investment qualifications or experience and gave little
thought to the extraordinarily high rate of return Rufus was promising.

The church’s senior management team
concluded his “personal guarantee makes this as safe an investment as any” and
produced a report on the investment that included no checks on Rufus’s past
investment performance or any references from clients.

None of the current trustees were
involved at the time of the Ponzi investment.

Meanwhile, McGlashan’s allegation
that Ashimolowo is in the know about the Ponzi investment is contrary to
earlier denials by the KICC Senior Pastor that he was not part of the decision
to invest the money as he was not a trustee of the KICC.

“The trustees actions were totally independent
and were not influenced in any way by pastor Ashimolowo,” said Dipo Oluyomi,
KICC chief executive in a recent statement in Lagos.

But McGlashan rubbished this in the
Guardian of London interview.

He (Ashimolowo) sometimes jets into
London on Sunday morning, delivers back to back services and then flies out of
the country later that day, said McGlashan.

Before the problem with the British
Charity, Ashimolowo delivers sermons to his congregations at branches of the
church in the UK, Ireland, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Malawi and the
Democratic Republic of Congo that teaches how God wants them to be rich,
including lessons on the “irrevocable laws of wealth creation”.